Subsea acoustics technology, e.g. sonar, has been used for many years in facilitating underwater navigation, exploration, sensing and communications and it is often desirable to have several acoustic systems such as a split-beam echosounder, sub-bottom profiler, Doppler profiler, to name a few; in order to perform the various specific functions. Traditionally, each subsea acoustic system requires its own fixed software and hardware components as well as its own physical space on the vessel. In addition, each system can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and thus having multiple acoustic systems in a single vessel can become prohibitively expensive, in particular for smaller vessels or non-commercial vessels.
It is an object of the following to address the above-noted disadvantages.